It is spring time and to high school seniors, it is decision time. Of course, their decision on what school to attend next year, henges entirely on the decisions colleges have already made about the senior. Unfortunately, the decision the colleges make isn’t always very clear, so let’s clear up the meaning of a couple of the ambiguous decisions colleges release.
Waitlisted and deferred are among the more confusing decisions released. Here is what they mean. If a student is deferred it means the college wants to think a little more about the student. Often, they’ll request an additional piece of information from the student like first semester grades or an additional test score. Such a request might be sent to a student who has good numbers in one area, but numbers that miss the college’s mark in another. So, for example, a student who has great grades but a low test score might be given the opportunity by the college to submit another test score.
Sometimes, a deferral can mean a student has been pushed into a different applicant pool. This is somewhat common for students who apply early decision wherein they receive an early admission decision but are obligated to attend if admitted. A deferral here is a college’s way of saying, “We’re not ready to pull the trigger on you this early, but we would like to take a hard look at you along with our regular pool of applicants.”
Students who are waitlisted are essentially caught in a school’s own internal numbers game. Colleges have something akin to quotas in each freshman class. Let’s say a college knows they want their freshman class to be about 5,000 students. They need a certain number of students paying tuition in order to make their budget work. This college might know too they’ll likely have about 12,000 students apply and maybe they’ll end up offering regular admission to about 7000 of those. However, it’s harder to predict how many of those 7000 students will actually choose to attend. For certain, some will decide to attend other schools. In order to make sure they hit that 5000 student mark, the college might choose to waitlist a group of applicants in order to sort of keep them on the line if they need to boost their freshman class or fill in some other gaps in their freshman profile. Of the 7000 admitted students, if 5500 choose to attend, that’s bad news for the waitlisted group. However, if only 4000 of those students commit, the college is going to go back to the waitlist and start offering admission.
In either case, a waitlist or deferral is better than being out-right denied. A student may be stuck in college admissions purgatory, but they do still have a chance of getting in. This student would be wise to start seriously considering other options though. Waitlists and deferrals are very far from guarantees of admission and failing to put some effort into a plan B could leave the student without admission to any school as colleges often release final decisions on waitlists and deferrals very late in their admissions cycle.